"This is the hardest story that I've ever told. No hope or love or glory. Happy endings gone forevermore"

Thursday, April 15, 2010

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet with Leslie Jordan

I was a bit nervous when Ric and I walked into the Midtown Theater to see Leslie Jordan’s new one man show, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, and I realized it was cabaret. We were quickly escorted to table 20 where a waitress promptly took our drink order.

Crap, I thought. I didn’t see anything in the press notes about this. What the hell? Isn’t Leslie in recovery?

“Yeah, I’ll have a ginger-ale and he’ll have a coffee” I said to the waitress, still a bit put off by the entire setting.

I mean the tickets didn’t say anything about a drink minimum. I hate this. I hate this!

About that time I looked at our table and noticed a special drink menu made specifically for My Trip Down the Pink Carpet.

Well ain’t that a kick in the balls! So glad I could come to this booze fest with a splash of Jordan for good measure. There is no drink minimum the top of the menu declared.

Oh?

Well, uh, ok! That works. Very well then. Carry on. Don’t mind me and the conversation I am having with myself. Nothing to see here.

The show started about 15 minutes late but that was quickly forgotten the second Leslie stepped on the pink carpet.

What can I say about this show? It’s crude, foul, chock full of tawdry anecdotes and lurid details about some very bold faced names.

It’s also fall on the floor, laugh until it hurts and your ass falls off, downright hilarious. From the beginning until the end Jordan captivates with stories so cray-cray (wearing gold flecked contacts in the desert with Boy George, anyone?) you begin to wonder if he can top himself (ba-dum-bum). And he, of course, does!

Leslie has more energy on stage than someone (moi) twenty years his junior. And with the sweat pouring down his face he keeps moving. Pratfalls abound, he’s on his knees, dancing on a box, jump-roping with a pink velvet rope, jumping and bumping from here to there in no time flat. In fact, one of the best lines in the whole show results from Jordan’s profuse sweat (I won’t give it away, but you’ll know it when you hear it)

The thing that makes this show so effective is that a) it’s true and b) Jordan weaves just enough tenderness into the story that you walk away not only with new laugh lines but also with new lessons learned.

“The saddest thing in the world is a man at war with his own nature” Jordan proclaims in clarifying seriousness. At that moment you realize that Jordan’s trip down the pink carpet is meant to serve more than just laughs. It’s meant to make us think. About us. About what we think about ourselves. About our own “internalized homophobia” and self hatred.

To say that I enjoyed this is an understatement. There are not enough superlatives in the English language to attach to this show. Go see this. Go laugh. Go learn.